Saturday, May 19, 2007

Philippine Ragnarok Online Server Merge

Ragnarok players recently experienced a server merge. Mixed reactions were heard from the pRO community as their favorite server was shut down.I was a loyal RO player during the glorious days of Ragnarok Online. A dedicated follower of Loki and a champion of Oracles. I played sinc the open beta days and stopped just 2 years ago due to work. Now Loki is torn down together with the pioneer server Chaos where I experienced my happy moments in online gaming. Farewell to Loki my beloved server and farewell to Oracles my guild, my family.

Here is the updated mechanics of the server merge:

SERVER MERGE MECHANICSDate Posted: May. 04, 2007

Good day Rok Stars!

You’ve read about it on the forums, blogs, and various websites. However today it becomes 100% official! The pRO Team is happy to announce that the much talked-about Server Merge will finally happen on May 17, 2007! Servers will be down starting Midnight of May 16, and we are anticipating a 20-hour downtime while the Gravity Engineers, who flew all the way from South Korea, work on the servers. The Server Merge website will be up by Thursday, May 17, 2007.

The Server Merge website will contain English and Tagalog versions of the mechanics as seen below.

MAJOR CHANGES

The following features will be reset when the merge happens. This is unavoidable and all other countries who did the Server Merge experienced the same thing.

– Agit Ownership

– Agit Economy & Safeguard

– Alchemist Rankings

– Taekwon Rankings

– Blacksmith Rankings

– Aldebaran Race Track Rankings

– Warp Points (Acolytes, Priests, Monks, Champions, and High Priests)

– Godly Seal Quest

– Auction System

– Mail System

– KAFRA PIN

ACCOUNT SPLIT

There are three instances wherein your main account will be split. The first one is if you exceed the 5 character slot limit in any of the merging server groups. This means that the combined total of characters in Baldur, Tyr, or Freya must not exceed 5. Another is if you exceed the 300 kafra storage limit in any of the merging groups. This means that the total number of combined items in your kafra storage in any of the merging groups must not exceed 300. Lastly, you must not exceed the 30,000 limit for one item in the Kafra. More details on all three occurrences below.

CHARACTER SLOT LIMIT

If the sum of the total number of characters in any of the merging server groups in your account exceed the 5 slot limit, your account will be split. Newly created accounts due to split will have the same password and user details as the main account. The username will be the original username with the suffix: PRO00. The last 2 numbers at the end will increase per split account (PRO00, PRO01, PRO02, etc.).

This is an example of one instance of exceeding the 5 Slot Limit:

Carlo owns a Ragnarok account with the username carloroks. In his account, he has 2 characters in Chaos, 4 characters in Loki, and no characters in the other servers. The combined total of characters from both merging servers is 6, which exceeds the 5-slot limit. Because of this, Carlo’s account will split. His original username – carloroks, will get the characters from the server with the highest number of characters. In this case, it’s Loki (4). In case of a tie in the number of characters per server, the main account will get the characters from the older server (Chaos). The new account will be carloroksPRO00, and it will contain all characters from the Chaos server.

Username: carloroks (original)

Baldur – 4 Characters (Loki)

Username: carloroksPRO00

Baldur – 2 Characters (Chaos)

This is an example of multiple instances of exceeding the 5 Slot Limit:

Carlo owns a Ragnarok account with the username carloroks. In his account, he has 5 characters in Chaos, 4 characters in Loki, 5 characters in Fenrir, 4 characters in Odin, 4 characters in Sarah, 3 characters in Lydia, and 2 characters in Iris. The combined total of the characters in the respective server groups are as follows – Baldur (9), Tyr (9), Freya (9). All server groups exceed the 5-slot limit. Carlo’s main account – carloroks, will get the characters from the dominant servers (servers with more characters compared to their partners). At the end of the merge, Carlo will have the following accounts:

Username: carloroks (original)

Baldur – 5 Characters (Chaos)

Tyr – 5 Characters (Fenrir)

Freya – 4 Characters (Sarah)

Username: carloroksPRO00

Baldur – 4 Characters (Loki)

Username: carloroksPRO01

Tyr – 4 Characters (Odin)

Username: carloroksPRO02

Freya – 3 characters (Sarah)

Username: carloroksPRO03

Freya – 2 characters (Sarah)

ACCOUNT CHARACTER TRANSFER

On May 30, 2007, Gravity will upload a patch that will expand the character slots from 5 to 9. We can’t do this earlier because it is technically not feasible to do the Server Merge with more than 5 character slots. This is an unavoidable limitation of the system. However, after we do the merge, we will open the option of transferring characters from your split accounts into your main accounts. Stay tuned for more information on this one as the days go by.

KAFRA STORAGE LIMIT

If the sum of the total number of items in your Kafra Storage in any of the merging server groups in your account exceed the 300 limit, your account will be split. Newly created accounts due to split will have the same password and user details as the main account. The username will be the original username with the suffix: PRO00. The last 2 numbers at the end will increase per split account (PRO00, PRO01, PRO02, etc.).

This is an example of one instance of exceeding the 5 Slot Limit:

Carlo owns a Ragnarok account with the username carloroks. In his account, he has 150 items in his Kafra Storage in Chaos, 160 in Loki, and no items in the other servers. The combined total of characters from both merging servers is 310, which exceeds the 300 limit. Because of this, Carlo’s account will split. His original username – carloroks, will get the kafra storage from the server with the highest number of characters or in case of a tie – the oldest. In this case, it’s Loki (4). The new account will be carloroksPRO00, and it will contain all items from the Chaos server.

Username: carloroks (original)

Baldur – 160 Kafra Storage (Loki)

Username: carloroksPRO00

Baldur – 150 Kafra Storage (Chaos)

This is an example of multiple instances of exceeding the 5 Slot Limit:

Carlo owns a Ragnarok account with the username carloroks. In his account, he has the following number of items in their respective Kafra storages: Chaos (150), Loki (160), Odin (50), Fenrir (260), Lydia (50), Iris (50), and Sarah (210). The combined total of the Kafra storage items in the respective server groups are as follows – Baldur (310), Tyr (310), Freya (310). All server groups exceed the 300 limit. Carlo’s main account – carloroks, will get the Kafra storages from the dominant servers (servers with more characters compared to their partners). At the end of the merge, Carlo will have the following accounts:

Username: carloroks (original)

Baldur – 160 (Chaos)

Tyr – 260 (Fenrir)

Freya – 210 (Sarah)

Username: carloroksPRO00

Baldur – 160 (Loki)

Username: carloroksPRO01

Tyr – 50 (Odin)

Username: carloroksPRO02

Freya – 210 (Sarah)

Username: carloroksPRO03

Freya – 50 (Sarah)

GAME TIME and ROK POINTS

Existing game time and rok points will be credited to the main account. Newly created accounts due to splitting will only have 2 hours of game time and they will be unlinked from your MYLU profile.

GUILDS WITH THE SAME NAME

Guilds with the same name from other baby servers will have the first two letters of their respective server inserted to the name as a suffix.

For example, there is Shadow Circle chaos and Shadow Circle Loki. After the merge, there will be two Shadow Circles. The first one (from chaos) will be Shadow Circle [Ch] and from Loki will be Shadow Circle [Lo].

CHARACTERS WITH THE SAME NAME

If a character name exists in multiple baby servers in a server group, the names will have a suffix added with the first two letters of their respective baby servers and a number starting from 00. If your name is unique to your server, you will not have a suffix and you will not have the option to change your name.

For example: there is a carlo in Chaos and Loki. The new names after the merge will be: Carlo_Ch00 and Carlo_Lo00.

All characters that are affected by the naming convention will get a chance to change their name once for 3 days. They will be automatically prompted by a window when they log-in Ragnarok and select their character after the Server Merge.

WHAT TO DO TO AVOID SPLIT ACCOUNTS?

To avoid split accounts, we strongly recommend that you take the following measures prior to the merge. This will make the merge smoother for you because you won’t need to worry about extra accounts.

1.) Make sure that the character total of your server groups does not exceed 5 (Chaos + Loki, Odin + Fenrir, Iris + Sarah + Lydia). We highly recommend that you delete nuisance characters that you’ve created in the past.

2.) Make sure that your total kafra per server group does not exceed 300 (Chaos + Loki, Odin + Fenrir, Iris + Sarah + Lydia). You can trade the various equipment in your kafra to other characters first or you can actually just throw useless items away.

If you want assistance in determining what to do or for more information on what will happen, please call our customer support hotline at 7519611. You can also send in a ticket through our customer support system asking questions about the merge.